Lync Migration Featured Article

Nectar UC Platform Now Pairs with Sonus SBCs

In the deployment and maintenance of communications networks, business often find themselves using a handful of software and hardware to track their use of unified communications (UC) applications, such as Microsoft Skype (News - Alert) for Business, and the session border controllers (SBCs) that handle the path of traffic through the edge of the network. This can leave systems admins with a headache because the mixing and matching of their respective management products may not work well together, and that can leave a dent in the efficiency of any business’s operation.

Nectar (News - Alert) Services has now paired with Sonus Networks to help alleviate those headaches and improve the efficiency of their clients’ working environments. The Nectar Unified Communications (News - Alert) Management Platform (UCMP) is now certified to work directly with the Sonus SBC 1000 and 2000 models. Overall, clients will have the ability to monitor multiple controllers from their UCMP installations that may reside in a central, remote location from much of that hardware. Mykola Konrad (News - Alert), the vice president of product management and marketing at Sonus, commented that this development could help businesses reduce the number of servers they need install and monitor within their global networks.

“While the decision to migrate to Skype for Business offers many benefits, SIP environments aren’t immune to low session quality issues,” Konrad said. “Organizations want to quickly identify the location of those network issues before communication and collaboration are interrupted. As the first SBC vendor to integrate with Nectar’s UCMP offering, we are excited to provide our joint partners and customers with an exclusive monitoring and diagnostic solution that pinpoints network issues and lowers costs by minimizing deployment of additional servers.”

The possibility of utilizing centralized UC diagnostics comes as a primary feature of this pairing. Businesses can install their monitoring core at a central location and still have access to all their UC applications and their SBCs. When trouble occurs, administrators can see everything of issue that has taken place; they can then communicate the need for fixes to remote teams. In the meantime, they can see the smooth running processes of all their assets from a single office.

This leads to an enhanced ability for companies to expand without additional hassle. New remote sites can be constructed and, with a single internet connection, can link back to the central hub for monitoring. The remote site will not need to install its own management software or servers – only a border controller – so network complexity can lower alongside a business’s capital expenditures.

In the end, all sites can hope to realize better calling and network quality because centralized management from the UCMP can show where network struggles exist and offer an avenue to improved operation. Call quality across all sites can improve with a few settings changes, and all the big-name UC platforms such as Avaya, Cisco (News - Alert), and Microsoft can witness improvements in their performance.